Re: Any reason to worry about using wx? (but it uses GTK!?! :)

[Michael Ekstrand <mekstran scl ameslab gov>]

Chris:

I'll try to address all three of your mails from yesterday here.

On Jun 29, 2006, at 2:08 PM, Christian Seberino wrote:
> wx uses GTK under the hood...at least on Unix and Linux.
>
> Can anyone see any problems //down the road// with using wx as far
> as losing benefits a pure GTK app would have?

There are two sides to this question, really.  One reflected by your 
previous questions, the issue of integration, and then the other of 
toolkit niceness.

On the integration, I'm not 100% sure.  GNOME integration, to me, means 
providing the appropriate .desktop files so the app shows up in GNOME's 
menus, using GNOME-style icons, following the HIG (Human Interface 
Guidelines) as much as possible, potentially using gconf for storing 
preferences, respecting GNOME's setting for the default web browser and 
email program, etc.  In general, plain GTK apps come close enough that 
it doesn't matter whether they were specifically for GNOME.   Also, lot 
of that can be accomplished with wx, but not necessarily as easily.  
And if you're following GNOME HIG, then you aren't following the 
Windows or Apple UI guidelines very closely (some elements of that wx 
will handle, but there's a lot that it can't).

The other side is toolkit niceness.  The benefit a pure GTK+ app has 
that wxWidgets doesn't is GTK+.  GTK+ provides a good selection of 
expressive, high-level widgets that are capable of fairly incredible 
behavior out of the box.  wxWidgets goes to a 
lowest-common-denominator, and makes you program these excellent 
widgets through an API that reeks of Win32 and MFC.  I realize this 
probably isn't what you're asking, but it is a quite pertinent point 
when it comes to programmer sanity.  Where I work, I'm working on a GUI 
with GTKmm, and some colleagues are working on another program using 
wx.  Their frustration level with getting the widgets to work and do 
what they want is much higher.  Also, wx forces GTK to abandon its 
native container-based widget layout model (one of GTK+'s huge 
benefits) in favor of a Windows-like position-and-size model, 
controlled with size managers.

So there's a lost benefit immediately.  Down the road?  That one still 
applies as you have to maintain your code.  Also, since wxWidgets has a 
design that makes some assumptions from the Win3.1/Win95 era (in my 
somewhat limited experience with it through wxPython), it feels like it 
won't let you easily take advantage of further UI developments as the 
come very easily.

Just my $0.02...

- Michael